Push for ceasefire puts Jewish summer camp on unfamiliar ground
Camp Tawonga 'seems to be a microcosm of the divide we are hearing about in Jewish communities all over,' says camp director Aaron Mandel
Camp Tawonga
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News At Jewish sleepaway camps this summer, bunks and bathrooms accommodate any gender identity
Increasingly at non-Orthodox camps, there isn’t simply a boys side and a girls side
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Opinion This California camp lets Jews of Color like me just be ourselves
Have you ever heard the woods sing “B’tzelem Elohim”? The whistle between trees carries the melody. The acoustics of boulders amplify the reach of the lyrics: “When I reach out to you and you to me/We become B’tzelem Elohim.” It is in the divine image — B’tzelem Elohim — when an intergenerational and multiracial group…
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Fast Forward California Jewish Camp Cancels Final Session Over Forest Fires
(JTA) — The final summer session of Camp Tawonga in Northern California has been canceled due to smoke from the Ferguson Forest Fire. In a letter to parents also posted on social media, the director of the Jewish camp, Jamie Simon, said that “the U.S. Forest Service, the Tuolumne County Health Department and CAL FIRE…
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Fast Forward Camp Tawonga Saves Torah Scroll as Wildfire Rages
The largest wildfire in California’s history has led to the evacuation of a Jewish summer camp and destroyed at least one of its buildings, but a staffer managed to save a Holocaust-era Torah scroll. The Yosemite Rim Fire triggered the cancellation of Camp Tawonga’s annual Keshet LGBTQ Family Camp, San Francisco’s j. weekly reported. On…
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News Camp Tawonga, Scarred by Tragedy, Is Cornerstone for Bay Area Jews
(JTA) — When a massive oak tree toppled over on a stage where five counselors were having breakfast at Camp Tawonga, killing one and severely injuring two others, news of the tragedy quickly rippled across the Bay Area Jewish community. Founded in the 1920s, the camp located near Yosemite National Park is a pillar of…
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Opinion Camp Tawonga’s Missed Opportunity
It was surely difficult for leaders of Camp Tawonga to arrive at their decision not to tell their young charges about the shocking death of 21-year-old art counselor Annais Rittenberg after she was hit by a falling tree last week. My colleague Renee Ghert-Zand deftly captured their challenge in her Forward Thinking post yesterday. Since…
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Opinion Camp Tawonga and the Truth
Camp Tawonga’s leadership faced a difficult decision last week when 21-year-old art counselor Annaïs Rittenberg, was killed by a falling tree. They needed to decide what to tell the campers. The camp decided not to tell the children that Rittenberg had died — a decision that angers Rittenberg’s father. “It’s a tragedy,” Mark Rittenberg wrote…
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